ParadoxVerse Drabbles
by torchwoodtimelord
Summary: Character drabbles and studies of a mostly OC nature and perspective. Scenarios and scenes with canon characters usually. - Goes along with my Paradox!Verse stories. Rated T for now.
1. Gloriana

**DISCLAIMER **- Doctor Who and Torchwood and all that don't belong to me. I just write the fanfics.

**THIS TALE:**This is a "character study" of an OC I've created for a fic. I'll be adding various "studies" and interactions with canon characters and my OCs in this story file thing. They're more of a bit of drabbles really.

**MISC INFO** - This is **IMPORTANT**...... _ITALICS MEANS TELEPATHIC COMMUNICATION!!!!! _Because, y'know, the Face of Boe doesn't generally actually TALK much.

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**_GLORIOUS REVENGE_**

Large eyes opened as footsteps filled the cavernous control room. A voice reached out through the dark as the footsteps drew closer.

_Who is there?_

_You can hear me, yes? I should think you can, given the size of your cranial cavity and the immense development of your telepathic centres._

_You must leave this place. It is too dangerous to be out in the open during the plague._

_I seek an audience with you, oh Great Big Face of Boe._

_You must go. For your own safety, you must-_

_Don't you want to know who I am?_

A pause in her sweet, telepathic wave. _They called me Gloriana._

_The seeker of glory._

_It's funny. I never thought of myself like that. Seeking anything other than a purpose and a place to lay my head. Greed and adventure. The occasional camaraderie, yes. But notoriety? Riches? Glory? In retrospect, I never argued with the name. It was better than the other one. Better than the number the Agency assigned me. Anything was better than the legacy I was bound to, the destiny that was placed on me from birth._

She came into view then, into the sparse light that attempted to fight off the gloom. She was beautiful, of that he had no doubt. Her long dirty blond hair was free, cascading down her back as she stopped a few feet away. Her frame was a bit short, but she carried herself as if she were a giant.

_I feel I should know you. You are familiar. I hear two heartbeats._

_Officially, I never existed. Born between the minutes that mark the time that never was. No record of my life, no record of my death. I was a nothing and a no one. A refugee from a war that never came. In theory, I shouldn't even be here, now, talking with you. Anyone who was on board the ship when the reset button was pushed those who were on board when it all started needed to be on board when it ended. If they weren't, they'd die. If they were on the ground when it started, and on the ship when it ended, they'd have a copy or die. But... I was neither here, nor there, when everything happened._

The Face of Boe tried to reach out again, to respond to her, to interrupt her. But he found quickly that he could not do so. Something prevented him. A dull, throbbing ache formed in his wide forehead, then spread slowly as she spoke through the sides towards the back where it settled and it continued.

_As the years wore on, and I grew older, I was hunted and I was tracked and I was humiliated beyond belief. First UNIT, then you lot. Because of it, I despised the humans, and I had no other kin. No others like myself to call family nor friend. Is it any surprise that when I found another like me, I latched on and refused to let him go?_

It was now she spoke, her lips parting and her voice that before had been heard solely inside the enormous mind could now be heard by ears, if there had been any close by to hear her. She began pacing back and forth in what the Face could only put down as frustration.

"But in the end, even he turned against me. He didn't believe me when I told him about the drums. And now, I'm going to make him listen. I'm going to make them all take notice. By taking everything from him. Destroying everyone who matters to him, and those who caused me to lose everything I should have had. Starting with **you**."

She stopped her pacing, and she smiled, and she held up a small plastic patch. A tiny little thing, nothing more than a mood. "With this," she said. "With this, I will poison everyone and everything on this wretched planet. But you know this already. You no doubt heard about it from that blasted Martha Jones and that self-righteous Doctor of yours. Years ago, when you were young and strong and able to do more than try to block me from your mind."

The giant face could only look at her through the tank, his large eyes watching her as she pulled from her pocket a familiar yet deadly tool. She turned, aiming it toward the machinery and giving it a jolt. Sparks flew as the hologram of Sally Calypso started to play on a loop.

She smiled darkly as she tossed the laser screwdriver into the air, letting the Bliss patch fall to the floor as she reached out to catch the tool again. "Hope you have a nice couple of decades, Jack. I know I will. Oh, and you might want to close off the motorway while you're here. **Bliss** goes airborne in six hours."

She gave a little wave with a false innocent giggle. "Tootles."

Large eyes closed as a blinding flash filled the area. When the Face of Boe opened them again, the woman was gone.


	2. Jonnathan James

**DISCLAIMER** - Don't own Torchwood nor Doctor Who. They belong to the Beeb. This is a fanfic drabble character study for my OC and how he reacts/interacts with a canon character. I don't make the monies off this.

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**_JACK AND JAMES - THE DINER_**

"Who are you?" Jack asked, taking in the strange combination of blue shirt and braces with a brown coat and trainers as he came to the table in the open. The young man was seated alone, stirring a hot cup of coffee with one hand and turning over a newspaper with the other. A second cup sat steaming across from him.

"The best of two amazing men," he replied, then folded his newspaper and looked up with a bright smile. "But it doesn't matter who I am. Because you won't remember me."

"Spiked my drink?" Jack asked with a brow raised in amusement as he sat down.

He shook his head. "No. It would be a waste of retcon."

"Why are you doing this? Why did you-"

"I am the Senior Director of the Torchwood Archives. Specifically the Time-line Corrections department. My team and I have been bouncing through time, trying to undo the damage caused by the Master's paradox machine."

Jack shook his head adamantly. "No. The Doctor, Martha, and I took care of that. I blew it apart with a machine gun myself."

"You think he would stop there?"

"Lucy," Jack said. "His own wife shot him. He refused to regenerate. He died in the Doctor's arms. I was there, I saw it happen."

"No. He lived," the stranger said. "And I've spent the last 50 years following the threads. Following each one to points in time where... inexplicable circumstances have caused time to split when it shouldn't have. And I have finally found the last paradox point." He smiled to himself, thinking back on what he had told Quincy moments before death separated them at last, and the Earthling went on one last adventure where he could not follow. But his smile faded as he remembered what was to come in the week ahead for the man before him. To lose the same man, in all sense of things, as he had 50 years ago. "The universe, it seems, is not without a sense of symmetry."

"I don't follow."

"I suppose I could explain it to you, since you won't remember a thing come morning. You'll wake up, climb up the ladder to find Ianto already up and about and telling you news about a corpse in the hospital. A routine day at Torchwood, really."

"You keep saying that. I won't remember. Why won't I? What are you going to do?"

He sighed, knowing he could not escape the explanation. It would also help him to pass the time as Toshiko and Owen dealt with Gwen and Ianto. Giving a small nod, he picked up his tea and took a sip before speaking. "The paradox began with a man. No one knew it at the time, but he was the one being in the universe that could change the course of history with just a sneeze, or even a laugh. And the Master, of course, exploited this. The paradox machine he created as Prime Minister was just a test. A prototype for what he was going to build. What all of us helped him build without even knowing it. Even you helped to play a part, Jack. But here, now, we can change it all. We can stop the future, the future where I come from."

"You can't do that. It creates a paradox within itself," Jack said. "Say you manage it. Say you succeed. You will cease to exist. If you don't exist, you can't stop the event from happening. Hence, a paradox."

"Exactly," the stranger said, and it was then Jack noticed the color of his eyes. A deep, soulful brown that seemed to both fit into his face and be out of place from it. And they were lit up now with a secret excitement. "But think of it, Jack. A paradox, within a paradox. If we can shift things in a certain direction, the original paradox will unravel to fit around the secondary. Something happens here, now, that creates the first paradox. It creates the future I have come from. But by creating another paradox, the first one, the one that created me, never happens. If that one never happens, I won't exist to create the second paradox that ends my own existence. Therefore, the original paradox itself comes unglued and time resumes its original design."

"It's suicide. You know that, right? You're not only putting yourself in danger, you're opening this city, this planet up to sterilization. You're opening it up to the Reapers. Without the Time Lords to help-"

"Captain Jack," he said, giving a cheeky grin and leaning back. He reached into his pocket, slyly removing a compact, but powerful tool from the inside. Jack's eyes followed the movement, and his heart quickened as he saw the familiar trinket. "I told you I work in Time-line Corrections. It's my job, and mine alone to fix this. If it makes you feel any better, I am a Time Lord, of sorts."

He checked his watch and gave a small sigh. "It seems our time is up. Not that you'll remember me, or anything said here. You're outside the Paradox Peremiter... Take care of those around you. Especially the ones you love most... You don't know when they will be snatched from your grasp."

He rose from his seat, but Jack reached out quickly and grabbed his arm. "Who are you?"

He smiled as he looked down at him, tilting his head subtly to the right. "John Smith," he lied. There was a slight buzzing in his ear before he heard Owen's voice. Ianto and Gwen had been neutralized. They had the infant clone. They would be waiting at the rendezvous for him. He did not respond. Not with Jack there.

Pulling his arm from his grasp, he gave a small nod. "Also, did you enjoy your drink, Captain?"

Jack glanced down at his cup. When he looked up again, the braces wearing trainer footed young man was gone. And Jack noticed perhaps for the first time that all the other patrons of the diner were fast asleep in their booths. "That sneaky son of a bitch..." he said the last with a yawn as he got up. He had to make it back to the hub before he passed out in the street.


End file.
